Liberating Fight Page 9

  “Good morning,” Edmund said, tipping his hat. “My name is Edmund Hanley, and this is Miss Salazar and Mrs. Paget. I wrote to Don Fernándo—he is expecting us, I hope?”

  The woman regarded Amaya a moment longer. Then she extended her hand for Amaya to clasp. Amaya, surprised at the gesture, shook the woman’s hand, but when she tried to withdraw, the woman held onto her. “Say your name,” the woman said. “Your full name.”

  Amaya reflexively assessed the woman’s health, noting that she was younger than she looked and that her bunions pained her. “Imelda Magdalena Caterina Salazar.”

  The woman nodded and released Amaya. “Please enter,” she said. Her voice was soft, diffident, the voice of someone used to following orders. It did not at all match her directness in taking Amaya’s hand. Amaya wanted to ask her name, but felt that might be bad manners.

  They followed the woman through the door, down two shallow steps, and into a short, low-ceilinged hallway floored with warm red-brown wooden planks. This led to a wider space like the entrance hall of an English town house, but with the same low ceiling as the hallway, a large, ornately carved side table, and a wardrobe equally ornate.

  “If you will wait here, I will tell Father you have arrived,” the woman said, and before Amaya could react to that astounding statement, she was gone, vanished through one of the three doorways leading off this room.

  “Father,” Amaya said. “She is my aunt.”

  “So it seems. I expected to have a greater struggle to gain admittance,” Edmund said. “After all, you might be a fortune-seeker or charlatan.”

  “I wonder,” Mrs. Paget said, “if she has talent. That greeting is one I have made myself, taking someone’s hand to determine through my Discernment if the speaker is lying.”

  Amaya examined the room more closely. The rug covering much of the floor, which was a boring beige color, was worn in a great swath across its center from generations of feet. The table’s varnish had worn off in places, and black marks across its legs showed where someone had kicked at them as they sat there. She wished she dared open the wardrobe to see what was stored within. She was beginning to understand what “reduced circumstances” meant.

  The woman returned. “Father will see you, she said, gesturing to them to join her at the doorway. Amaya followed promptly. Her earlier nervousness was gone, replaced by a great eagerness.

  Beyond this doorway, the house opened up into a room with a high, peaked ceiling supported by black beams that made a stark contrast to the white plaster of the walls. Another rug, this one woven in an interesting floral pattern, filled the space imperfectly, as if it had been made for a larger room. Three sofas occupied much of the room, their arrangement centered on the fireplace, which despite the warm summer day burned high and bright with a fire that smelled deliciously of wood smoke and apples. A wide window, also paned in glass, let in wan sunlight to illuminate the room, which had no other light source.

  An elderly man sat near the fire, bundled up against a chill Amaya did not feel. His thick white hair brushed his collar and covered the tips of his ears, and he gripped the head of an ebony walking stick in one hand. His brown eyes, so like the woman’s, focused on Amaya. “You claim to be Ernesto’s daughter,” he said in a stern voice that sounded much younger than his apparent age.

  “She is not lying,” the woman said. “I know.”

  “Discernment cannot detect a lie the speaker believes to be true,” the old man said. “Leave us, Graciela.”

  Graciela turned and left the room immediately, her head bowed as if the old man’s words had laid a weight on her. Amaya felt an instant’s pity for her. The old man had spoken with such peremptory dismissiveness Amaya felt the force of it as if he had directed it at her.

  The old man tilted his head to look more closely at Amaya. He ignored Edmund and Mrs. Paget entirely. “So,” he said, and tapped the stick against the rug, making a muffled rapping sound. “Prove you are who you say you are.”

  “I do not know what you would consider proof,” Amaya said. She wished he had offered her a seat; she did not like towering over him, in a pose he might consider intimidating.

  The old man snorted derisively. Beside him, the fire blazed higher as if he were an Extraordinary and capable of commanding it. “What are your parents’ names?”

  “Ernesto de Salazar y Ortiz, and Catherine Neville.”

  “And the year of your birth?”

  “1791. In Peru.”

  “And your father’s?”

  Amaya shook her head. “I know very little of their pasts. They were Mama and Papi to me, that is all.”

  The old man’s eyes fixed on her with a narrow ferocity that made her uncomfortable. “So you have nothing, no evidence, no identification, and you expect me to simply take your word for it that you are Ernesto’s child?”

  Amaya cast her mind back thirteen years and more. She was not entirely certain she wanted to claim a relationship with this man, but pride, and stubbornness, kept her rooted to the spot. “Papi had a scar on his left forearm,” she said. “A wide, ridged red welt. It was on the inside of his arm. He liked to make up stories about how it happened—that he had fought brigands, that he had rescued Mama from a burning building, stories like that, but I think he never told his children the truth about it. How old it was, I do not know, but he had it my whole life.”

  The old man drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he got heavily to his feet with the aid of his stick. “It was an accident with a knife,” he said. “Ernesto and his brother Joaquin were playing at pirates or some such nonsense, and Joaquin was careless. Both are dead now, and you…” He shook his head, slowly, as if he could not believe his own words. “I am Fernándo de Salazar y Ibáñez, and it seems you are my granddaughter.”

  Amaya could not think of anything to say. Fernándo gestured at the sofa across from his. “And who are your companions?” he asked, settling himself on his seat once more.

  “Edmund Hanley, sir. Miss Salazar’s friend and traveling companion.” Edmund saluted Fernándo. “This is Mrs. Paget.”

  Fernándo grunted again and picked up a handbell on a nearby table. Graciela appeared almost as soon as he rang it. “Graciela, bring refreshments,” Fernándo said. Graciela left without a word.

  Amaya said, “She is your daughter?”

  “Your aunt,” Fernándo said. “She keeps house for me. We no longer can employ so many servants as when I was young. Graciela knows her duty.”

  Amaya still could not credit the daughter of the house behaving like a servant. Perhaps Spanish households were different from English ones. She hoped Graciela would sit with them, because Amaya wanted to know her family better.

  But when Graciela returned, it was to bring a tray laden with teapot and cups. She poured tea and handed the cups around, then left again and returned with another tray, this one bearing small, delicate cakes that might have been served in an English drawing room. She served each of the three without making any move to provide herself with refreshment.

  “Send word to your brother and sister,” Fernándo instructed her when she would have left. “Tell them to come immediately. Ernesto’s child has returned.”

  Graciela nodded and once more vanished. So she truly was little more than a servant in her own home. Amaya felt another pang of sympathy for her aunt, and wondered how long she had been in this position.

  “I do not know my other kin,” she said. “You said, brother and sister?”

  “I have three children yet living out of nine,” Fernándo said. “My wife, God rest her soul, passed away some fifteen years ago. It seems Ernesto named you for her, as if that would make a difference. Ernesto was my eldest. Then Leocadio, who is a Seer and a priest, and Ynes, and Graciela.”

  “A Seer,” Edmund said. “You must be proud.”

  Fernándo shrugged. “Who am I to deny God what He has demanded? If Ernesto—” He stopped, and his mouth closed in a thin, hard line. “Ernesto was a fo
ol, and should never have left. But what is past is past.”

  Amaya and Edmund exchanged glances. Amaya took a sip of tea to keep from having to reply to this. She knew her father had left home under a cloud, but no more details than that. It sounded as if Fernándo still bore a grudge, but surely it could not be anything serious if he was willing to welcome her? She disliked not understanding a situation. She sipped again and resolved to observe without commenting until she knew better what she had got herself into.

  Mrs. Paget, meanwhile, said, “Do any of your other children have talent?” She clearly had concluded, as Amaya had, that talk about Ernesto was a bad idea. Amaya wondered at her question, because she knew Graciela was a Discerner, but guessed Mrs. Paget wished to divert the conversation.

  “Graciela is a Discerner, much good that may do her,” Fernándo said. “It is not as if it makes her better able to keep house. My late wife was a Mover, but not one of great power or strength.”

  “My husband was also a Mover,” Mrs. Paget said. “I am myself a Discerner.”

  Fernándo did not seem to feel this gave her a connection either to his late wife or to Graciela. “Have you talent, young man?”

  “I have not, but I have never felt the lack,” Edmund said cheerfully in a way that made him seem rather dim-witted. Amaya recognized at once it was a sham, though she could not guess why he wanted to deceive Fernándo. “My sister is an Extraordinary Speaker, and I believe she lives half her life in her reticulum.”

  Fernándo shrugged again and seemed to lose interest in Edmund. “An Extraordinary Shaper,” he said, turning his attention on Amaya. “Did your mother have talent? Is that where your gift comes from? Certainly not Ernesto.”

  “I don’t believe so,” Amaya said. “She never displayed it if she had it, and her mother did not say—”

  “Her mother? You know that family?”

  Amaya, surprised at his sudden intensity, said, “We have met, yes. Mrs. Neville found me in London.”

  “A fortune-seeker, no doubt,” Fernándo said. “Your mother was the same.”

  Amaya set her cup down with a sharp chink against the saucer. “I beg your pardon?” she said angrily.

  Fernándo made a dismissive gesture. “Catherine Neville believed Ernesto would inherit. She attached herself to him in the hope of gaining this estate, which is not small.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “That is what her father told me. He wrote to me instructing me to order Ernesto to drop the connection. I told him Ernesto was disinherited and the English girl would be disappointed.”

  “And yet Catherine married Ernesto anyway,” Edmund said, cutting off Amaya’s incipient outburst. “Your theory is flawed, sir.”

  Fernándo ignored him. “But that is past,” he said. “I forgave Ernesto his sins because it is my Christian duty. And I choose to welcome you as my granddaughter.”

  Amaya realized the points of her claws were digging into the flesh of her palms and relaxed her fists. She knew little of Christianity, but she did not believe a true Christian would be so quick to deliver insults and then claim he meant no harm. “My parents were happy together,” she said, “and I do not believe either of them had such mercenary motives as you suggest. But I agree that all that is in the past, and I am glad you gave up your anger at my father.”

  Another shrug. Amaya was coming to dread the gesture, which simultaneously conveyed derision and lack of interest. Fernándo took a firmer grip on his stick and pushed himself off the sofa, causing the three guests to stand as well. “Let me show you the estate,” he said.

  It sounded like a change of subject, but Amaya’s instincts told her Fernándo saw it as an extension of what they had been discussing. She wondered who his heir was. She knew Leocadio, as a priest, could not inherit a secular estate; the subject had come up on the journey to Madrid, as had the information that a priest in the Catholic faith was a priest forever. And yet she also knew that in most families, English or Spanish, the heir was the eldest son. Fernándo had no other sons, but he was old, and the estate must go somewhere at his death. She reminded herself to ask Edmund about it later. He had explained entailment; he likely knew what happened to inheritances under such conditions as this.

  They passed through more low-ceilinged halls floored with the same short red-brown planks and out the back door. The vines grew thicker here, hanging low over the door so Amaya seemed to walk out through a living green curtain. She pushed a vine out of her face and followed Fernándo along a path paved with stones whose rounded tops felt smooth under her feet.

  When they entered the garden, Amaya was glad she walked behind Fernándo, because in her surprise she failed to conceal her dismay. The garden would have been beautiful once, but now it was overgrown, with tall weeds encroaching on the former garden beds and a hedge that had not been trimmed in some time. Off to one side, nearly hidden by undergrowth, poked the curved top of a gazebo, its white paint flaking and peeling like dry skin. It was the most depressing thing Amaya had seen since arriving in Spain.

  A man dressed all in black stood near the gazebo, his hands clasped before him as if in prayer. Amaya had never seen clothing like his before, the upper half tightly fitted, the lower half a long skirt like a woman’s gown, with a long row of buttons down the front. He looked up and smiled at Amaya. He was missing a tooth on one side, but he did not attempt to hide the gap as Amaya had seen others do. His thinning black hair moved slightly in the light breeze.

  “How good to see you in the flesh,” he said. “I am Leocadio, your uncle. And you, child, you are our salvation.”

  Chapter 8

  In which someone again tries to command Amaya’s loyalty

  “Your—I beg your pardon?” Amaya said.

  Leocadio’s visage was serene, and he smiled as if her words gave him pleasure. “I have Seen it in Dream,” he said. “Your return marks the beginning of a new chapter in this family’s life. How good to see Ernesto returned to us, even in this small way. You resemble him greatly.”

  Fernándo made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a snort. Amaya wondered why he had not commented on the resemblance as he was pressing her for details that would prove her identity. He walked forward a few steps, leaning heavily on his stick. “What have you Seen, my son?”

  Leocadio’s attention flicked briefly to his father, and then his gaze returned to rest on Amaya. “Bright fire,” he said, “burning away the shadows of the past. Links in a chain, forged and re-forged. You stand at the right hand of one who will bring change.”

  Amaya did not like how intently he looked at her, as if he saw, not a woman, but a figure from Dream, highly symbolic and open to interpretation. “Do you know what your Dream means?”

  “It is as I say. Change is coming,” Leocadio said. “And you are at the heart of it. Father, where is Alejandro?”

  Fernándo gave his son a terrible look. “You see this garden,” he said, addressing Amaya as if Leocadio had not spoken. “It was Imelda’s—my wife. It grows unchecked in her memory, and because I find beauty in wild places. Come, we will walk.”

  He walked in his halting, stick-assisted way past Leocadio and into a gap in the hedge that did not look intentional. Amaya supposed it might only be overgrown. She exchanged glances with Edmund, who shrugged, the barest movement of his shoulders, and then they and Mrs. Paget followed Fernándo into the hedge.

  It felt like being swallowed by a great blue-green monster, with how closely the sides of the hedge pressed on Amaya. She and her companions were forced to walk single-file behind Fernándo, with Leocadio bringing up the rear, as the passage turned and then turned again. Overhead, the untrimmed tops of the hedges waved and bent in what were almost arches, giving Amaya the impression of walking through narrow corridors roofed with leafy branches.

  She shortened her stride so as not to overrun the much slower Fernándo. His shoulders hunched slightly, and his white hair curled over his collar, too long for fashion. His overa
ll appearance was that of a frail old man, yet his voice was strong and his opinions stronger. Amaya was coming to realize he ruled this household through iron will. Even Leocadio, possessed of a talent that gave him status and respect, bowed to his father. She felt even more pity for Graciela.

  They emerged from the hedge maze on a broad field burned yellow by the summer sun. The farthest edge of the field gradually merged with uncultivated land, bristling with spiny gray-green bushes growing amidst the occasional clumps of green grass. More of the low, spreading trees dotted the landscape, offering shade. At the moment, with the sky still overcast, they were unnecessary, but Amaya admired them anyway.

  Another house, this one with two stories, stood adjacent to the main house to define a yard of hard-packed earth, at the center of which lay a stone well that looked sturdier than either of the houses, as if the houses had grown up around it. A stable, weathered grey from what might have been a century of wind and storm, occupied the space opposite the second house, between the hedges and the field. A few horses ranged over the field, nipping at the dry grass or staring off into the distance looking noble. Amaya liked horses so long as she was not expected to ride them.

  “Ah, here they come,” Fernándo said. He was looking into the distance, beyond the field and the trees, to where a cluster of riders approached along a dusty road. There were five of them, Amaya observed, riding at a decent pace, with one bright bay out in front and the others, three chestnut and one black, gathered loosely behind.

  As they approached, Amaya sharpened her gaze to examine them. To her surprise, the rider in front was a woman, dressed in shirt and trousers like the other four riders with her hair bound around her head beneath her hat. Amaya had not yet seen a European woman wearing men’s garb. She knew female Extraordinary Movers wore divided skirts that were like very loose, wide-legged trousers for modesty’s sake when they Flew, but this woman’s clothing was clearly made for a man. She glanced at Fernándo, but he did not look angry or perturbed, and as he was the kind of man who would expect women to behave like women, his lack of reaction roused Amaya’s curiosity.